Yet another new ring detected around Saturn

[selden]

CC,

Where and in which version of Celestia did you see a radius of 60330 for Saturn?
solarsys.ssc in both v1.6.0 and svn specifies 60268 as the equatorial radius.

Horizons uses an value of 60268 +/- 4km at 1 bar.

I still haven't found the source of that value.

[Chuft-Captain]

Where and in which version of Celestia did you see a radius of 60330 for Saturn?

I didn't.... "The Planetary Society article quotes Saturn's radius as being 60,330 kilometers"... I was wondering whether Celestia or the blog had got it wrong.

I'm inclined to conclude that Celestia's got the right value as it agrees with Horizons.

Cheers
CC

[selden]

Emily has posted an explanation for the discrepancy in the radius of Saturn, See http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002168/

I sent off this question to Dave Seal, and confirmed that the 60,330 radius is the one used by the Cassini mission when they speak of distances in Rs; the same number was used by the Voyager mission. It is the radius of Saturn at the 100 millibar altitude. He didn't say why they choose the 100 millibar level instead of the 1 bar level.

[granthutchison]

2. The Moon S/2008 S1 (now named Aegaeon) and the associated G ring is not included in Celestia.

Just bumping this thread to note that an orbit for Aegaeon was published on 1 November, so it now appears in numberedmoons.ssc, as of SVN revision 4909.

If you use my add-on poormoons.ssc (recently discovered moons with poorly defined orbits), be sure to update it in tandem with numberedmoons.ssc, to avoid ending up with two copies of Aegaeon.

Grant